Discourse means language-in-use in a given context. Critical discourse is concerned with the perceptions and values that are embedded in a text and the power relations it facilitates. This course is concerned with both layers of discourse in the realm of digital culture. In the first part of the course we will examine sociolinguistic aspects of digital discourse: language change in new media, preforming identities as discourse, the changing nature of mediated conversation and the quality of online discourse (politeness, hate speech, trolling etc.). In the second part of the course we will familiarize ourselves with key critical discourses of new media: utopian versus neoliberal dystopian discourses of privacy and surveillance, participatory culture versus the economy of attention and neo-Marxist audience labor discourses, and postmodern discourses of power and knowledge in distributed networks.